How Operations/Investigative Staff Can Work With Intelligence Counterparts to Dismantle Organized Crime, Essay Example

The operations of law enforcement officers need to be well organized as well as well coordinated to ensure that crime is effectively combated and overcome. To this end a good system of tracking the progress of specific cases as well as new developments in the investigations are vital in ensuring that the progress is managed well and that the desired results are achieved.

The result oriented diagram aims at giving a cohesiveness of forces between the investigations/operations staff and the criminal intelligence specialists. The diagram helps to clearly indicate the progress made on certain cases as well as indicating the different activities that have been carried out in regard to a specific case (Johson p14).

Organised crime presents a complicated challenge to law enforcement. For the law enforcement officers to effectively tackle the organised crime they need concerted efforts as well as well planned and executed strategy to dismantle the groups or cartels of criminals. The investigations/operations staff can work with the criminal intelligence specialists in this through three ways.

First they need to agree on the most appropriate approach to the crime problem and this is to be done by ensuring that they agree and work synergistically towards the target.  This step is the most important in ensuring a good working relationship between the two categories of law enforcers. While the investigations staff has a good feel of the ongoing of the organised crime gang. The intelligence experts have good skills of profiling and establishing the behaviour patterns of the various criminals as well as the activities of these groups. The two groups working together can easily establish the movement patterns of the gangs and the activities they are involved in. By doing this, they can easily determine the critical points of an operation and ensure that they map this points onto the flow diagram. These points will act as an important work map that will help direct the various people involved in the investigation to easily establish the progress made.

The second thing is agree on when to consult as well as compare notes. If the two categories of staff want to work in tandem, they need to ensure that they maintain close contact and that they have cohesiveness of thought. The investigations/operations group need to constantly update the intelligence group on the progress made in following up the gangs activities. The intelligence will work on any new or information obtained and therefore develops new plans on the way forward. This will help in developing a clear profile of the organised gang and therefore know how best to penetrate and break the group.

The third stage in the cooperative effort is assessment of progress. The intelligence unit as well as the operations unit need to constantly check the progress made against the objectives. This is vital in ensuring that any new offshoots are added to the fish bone structure and ensure that all material information on an organised crime is unearthed. The intelligence experts help in profiling the criminals and therefore advising the investigators of the best approach to the proceedings. The efforts made ensure that they constantly update the group and therefore ensure that they work in complete harmony and unison.

The trickiest thing with organised crime is that they are capable of being amorphous and changing tactics upon realising that they are being hunted. To ensure that this does not happen, the law enforcers need to work closely and manage their activities properly hence forestall any chance of the group going into hiding. This will therefore ensure that they arrest and prosecute the suspects before the suspects change tact and conceal their criminal activities.

Expressing Strategic and Tactic Intelligence in Visual Investigative Aids

Strategic intelligence is that intelligence that is required to lay down the grand plan or the strategy to be adopted in approaching the goal. This is the intelligence that acts as the insight that drives that plan that is to be achieved. Strategic intelligence acts as the guiding knowledge when decisions are being made in matters of employing the various resources and techniques available when combating a crime.

Visual investigative aids give the general direction of the investigation as well as guiding the overall flow of information of the intended activity. This implies that the knowledge of the existing circumstances, resources, geographical locations as well as any counter strategies employed by the criminal gangs will by far dictate the outlook of the visual investigative aid. The in-depth knowledge required to infiltrate any criminal activity is what forms strategic intelligence (Studies in Intelligence p5). This helps in ensuring that the visual investigative aids portray the available knowledge. To express this, the various flow charts required will portray the known facts such as the language of the suspects, their numbers, and age as well as other facts such as the times they keep in their operations. The blood groups and other available data can also help in developing a visual aid. Once this is done and the data is collected into a flow chart or any other such visual aid, one can easily discern the best approach as well as the resources required to carry out the investigations successfully.

Tactical intelligence seeks to do a blow by blow analysis of the crime and develop appropriate steps to combat the criminal activities as they occur. It also looks at the evolving nature of the criminal activities and therefore sets out specific techniques to combat the crime (Stanislawski p2). Visual investigative aids help in determining which essential steps will be taken. The tactical intelligence is therefore portrayed by way of deliberate steps that are mapped to each other and all of them geared towards a common objective. If one is developing a flow chart for use as a visual investigative aids. Tactical intelligence is key in determining where every step fits in the general process. The resources used in every step are also clearly mapped and therefore labelled. Different offshoots and brunching from the main diagram are indications of the contingent measures that are to be adopted in the event other unforeseen developments come up or when the available strategic and tactical information is inaccurate.

The visual investigative aids are a predictive work plan that uses strategic and tactical intelligence to determine what is expected in the field and therefore lay out an action plan based on the available information. To this end, the visual investigative aids are highly dependent on the tactical and strategic intelligence. This information is therefore expressed as figures and images in floe charts to help users visualise and understand the exact situation and the intended movement of information in the activity.

Work Cited

Center for the Study of Intelligence. The State of Strategic Intelligence. Studies in Intelligence  CSI Publications  vol51no2  <https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol51no2/the-state-of-strategic-intelligence.html>

Rob Johnston, Analytic Culture in the US Intelligence Community: An Ethnographic Study. Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 2005, p13-16.

Stanislawski, Bartosz. “Flexible Intelligence Against Elusive Threats: Evolution of Translational Criminal/Terrorist Organizations and the Rising Challenges to Intelligence Gathering” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Hilton Hawaiian Village, Honolulu, Hawaii, Mar 05, 2005